Author Archives for Kim Staib

About Kim Staib

Kim is a Manager of Customer Success at QuotaFactory and she is responsible for rolling out new project implementations, reporting and continuous contact list development and confinement, as well as ensuring the ongoing success of our customer engagements.

As a VP of Sales you’ve probably encountered this situation before. You’ve got a nice healthy amount of meetings at the top of your funnel and you have capable field reps there to take those meeting and transition them to... Read More »

October 26, 2016 9:00 amPublished by Kim StaibComments Off on Best Practices For Passing Over BANT Qualified Leads

If you follow our Sales Wars blog, you’ll probably recognize the term BANT in reference to the lead qualification process. The sales term “BANT qualified lead” is important in any client-based organization, no matter the size or industry. When it comes down... Read More »

August 10, 2016 2:20 pmPublished by Kim StaibComments Off on It’s Not All About the C-Suite: Why SDRs Should Prospect Multiple Levels Within An Organization

Anyone working in client-based outsourced lead gen knows this conversation all too well: Vendor: Can you give me an idea of what profile you are looking for in regards to contact data procurement? Client: We ONLY want to talk to folks... Read More »

Ongoing training of an SDR is an essential function of not only keeping your “A players” sharp but also elevating your “B players” to the next level. One of the ways our sales development managers like to check in with our SDRs is through call shadowing. If done with purpose, call shadows can give you the greatest insight as to how that rep is performing and if there are any immediate areas of improvement that can be addressed.

There are lots of ways to measure performance of your sales and sales development reps. Some sales operations managers are super metrics driven and some go on gut feeling. In a previous blog, I outlined some key metrics we use to track our SDRs and it got me thinking, what are some KPIs you can’t run a report on? What are the intangibles that push a rep from good to great?

This spring marks five years for me at QuotaFactory (formerly AG Salesworks) and it also indicates one of our busiest times for recruitment and hiring. Graduates are soon to be out of school and looking for what to do next... Read More »

You know what cracks me up? Memes. Especially those ones with the caption "you're doing it wrong." To the laymen, the "you're doing it wrong" catchphrase is commonly associated with "fail" images or videos. The phrase suggests there is significant room for improvement...to say the least.

As a frequent blogger for Sales Wars I am often surprised when inspiration comes to me from unlikely places. This week it came from a book I am reading which has nothing to do with sales. It’s called Modern Romance: An investigation by Aziz Ansari. Ansari is known for his role on NBC’s Parks and Recreation and most recently the Netflix series Master of None (which he also wrote and directed). Ansari decided to take a different route than most other comedians with book deals that generally compile humorous essays. Instead, he chose to elicit the help of NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and conduct an in-depth exploration of the pleasures and perils of modern romance. Now, what does this have to do with sales? Well I’ll tell ya.

In my previous blog, I mentioned a few trending topics that come up when you mention professional women (i.e. wage gap, lower percentage of women in sales roles, etc.) One topic that I noticed the most is the low number of women occupying the C-suite in Fortune 500 organizations. What does this have to do with getting more women interested in sales roles? I’ll tell ya!

Open Linkedin (or really any news outlet today) and you are bound to see a headline mentioning professional women in some way. You can scroll through dozens of articles about how we need more women CEO’s or how Silicon Valley is a “boys club” or even buzzing a few weeks ago, actress Jennifer Lawrence speaking out about the wage gap in Hollywood. The topic is everywhere. This goes hand in hand with the fact that when we think about sales, we often associate the job with men.

You know those “I’m kidding, but I’m really not” statements? Like telling your cube-mates “If I need to listen to your country music station on spotify one more day I’m moving desks” or “Everyone will hate you if you microwave seafood in the kitchen.” It’s done in a joking tone so as to not offend anyone but you know deep down there is some truth to the statement. I recently encountered this at Dreamforce when an inside sales manager said to me, stifling a laugh, “I have no idea what my inside sales reps are doing with their days.” I know he was kidding…but really, was he?

Imagine yourself as an inside sales rep, you pound the phones day in and day out trying to qualify leads. You navigate accounts, build pipeline, and then finally your efforts pay off and someone answers. You pass them…score! You feel a great sense of accomplishment as you get the calendar invite scheduled connecting your field sales rep and the prospect. Cut to a week or two later when the call is set to happen and you get the dreaded email from your sales rep…

With the summer months coming to a close it’s time to be proactive and look forward. The question reps need to ask themselves at this stage in the year is “how am I setting myself up for success in Q4?” When I was a Sales Development Rep I loved Q4. Prospects are finally back from their summer vacations, 2016 planning is in full swing...it’s a great time to prospect! My first step toward Q4 success was always an in-depth pipeline review.

I have been a client success manager for over a year now and I’m still running into sales professionals discussing BANT. I’ll be open when saying that has become the bane of my existence. There are pieces of BANT that... Read More »

It’s evident that more and more data vendors are entering the market so it’s important for you to stay organized and work with proper guidelines when procuring a B2B list to prospect. As a client success manager I want to ensure that my clients are receiving the best data possible so after I receive the list from our partners I also scrub the list myself to make sure all of my client’s criteria has been fulfilled. Below are three questions I ask myself before importing a new list into our CRM for our clients.

As an inside sales manager or a marketer there are few scenarios more frustrating than watching your MQL stockpile grow while your forecasted pipeline plateaus. I have worked on enough MQL based campaigns to know that there are “nuggets of gold in them hills” you just need reps who know how to find them. I wrote a blog previously outlining tips you can pass along to your reps to ensure they get the most out of the MQLs, which when applied have netted success on these campaigns. However, what I also know is that to see any success at all, it starts with your rep.
Now if your rep’s issue is laziness, then your solution is simple. End the relationship and move on. But more often than not there are ways to rectify the situation with some coaching. I’ve found that there are some coaching techniques that have consistently helped in getting these reps passing opps from MQLs like a champ.

This where QuotaFactory comes in and provides assistance. A welcomed change from cold prospecting, QuotaFactory reps see calling into these MQL lists as solid gold. We understand that there is a dollar amount attached to every one of those MQLs that comes in and we want to help you extract the most value out of those lists.
Now…dialing into a “warm” MQL list does require a different strategy from cold prospecting. Before launching one of these campaigns I like to remind my reps of three tips to help them be successful.